vMotion

So recently I came across and issue where a “space” at the end of a VM’s directory causes it to fail to vMotion.

The error is typically cryptic stating that the host is too busy.If you try to browse the directory using the vsphere client it looks empty. You also can’t rename the directory using the vsphere.

For us the problem came about when we were creating VM’s. We typically created quite long machine names in vsphere. “machine name – OS – description.Ask you can see we tend to add Tue description of the vm to the name. Now what vSphere does is take the first 32 characters and use that as the directory name. If the 32nd character is a “space”….. well you get the picture.

I solved the issue by using the vMA (this can also be done using the ESX console). I use the vMA a fair amount and have all of our nfs shares mounted in /mnt. I would recommend this as it just good to have that kind of access to the virtual machine files.

Anyway the fix:1. Shutdown and remove the VM from inventory.( Don’t delete from disk!!!).2. Using the vMA browse to the location of the folder. Rename through folder using the mv command. mv “folder with space ” “folder with space”.3. Renregister Tue vm with sphere or the ESX server.